Lucene - Sorting

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In this chapter, we will look into the sorting orders in which Lucene gives the search results by default or can be manipulated as required.

Sorting by Relevance

This is the default sorting mode used by Lucene. Lucene provides results by the most relevant hit at the top.

private void sortUsingRelevance(String searchQuery)
   throws IOException, ParseException {
   searcher = new Searcher(indexDir);
   long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
   
   //create a term to search file name
   Term term = new Term(LuceneConstants.FILE_NAME, searchQuery);
   //create the term query object
   Query query = new FuzzyQuery(term);
   searcher.setDefaultFieldSortScoring(true, false);
   //do the search
   TopDocs hits = searcher.search(query,Sort.RELEVANCE);
   long endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();

   System.out.println(hits.totalHits +
      " documents found. Time :" + (endTime - startTime) + "ms");
   for(ScoreDoc scoreDoc : hits.scoreDocs) {
      Document doc = searcher.getDocument(scoreDoc);
      System.out.print("Score: "+ scoreDoc.score + " ");
      System.out.println("File: "+ doc.get(LuceneConstants.FILE_PATH));
   }
   searcher.close();
}

Sorting by IndexOrder

This sorting mode is used by Lucene. Here, the first document indexed is shown first in the search results.

private void sortUsingIndex(String searchQuery)
   throws IOException, ParseException {
   searcher = new Searcher(indexDir);
   long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
   
   //create a term to search file name
   Term term = new Term(LuceneConstants.FILE_NAME, searchQuery);
   //create the term query object
   Query query = new FuzzyQuery(term);
   searcher.setDefaultFieldSortScoring(true, false);
   //do the search
   TopDocs hits = searcher.search(query,Sort.INDEXORDER);
   long endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();

   System.out.println(hits.totalHits +
      " documents found. Time :" + (endTime - startTime) + "ms");
   for(ScoreDoc scoreDoc : hits.scoreDocs) {
      Document doc = searcher.getDocument(scoreDoc);
      System.out.print("Score: "+ scoreDoc.score + " ");
      System.out.println("File: "+ doc.get(LuceneConstants.FILE_PATH));
   }
   searcher.close();
}

Example Application

Let us create a test Lucene application to test the sorting process.

LuceneConstants.java

This class is used to provide various constants to be used across the sample application.

package com.tutorialspoint.lucene;

public class LuceneConstants {
   public static final String CONTENTS = "contents";
   public static final String FILE_NAME = "filename";
   public static final String FILE_PATH = "filepath";
   public static final int MAX_SEARCH = 10;
}

Searcher.java

This class is used to read the indexes made on raw data and searches data using the Lucene library.

package com.tutorialspoint.lucene;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;

import org.apache.lucene.analysis.standard.StandardAnalyzer;
import org.apache.lucene.document.Document;
import org.apache.lucene.index.CorruptIndexException;
import org.apache.lucene.queryParser.ParseException;
import org.apache.lucene.queryParser.QueryParser;
import org.apache.lucene.search.IndexSearcher;
import org.apache.lucene.search.Query;
import org.apache.lucene.search.ScoreDoc;
import org.apache.lucene.search.Sort;
import org.apache.lucene.search.TopDocs;
import org.apache.lucene.store.Directory;
import org.apache.lucene.store.FSDirectory;
import org.apache.lucene.util.Version;

public class Searcher {
	
IndexSearcher indexSearcher;
   QueryParser queryParser;
   Query query;

   public Searcher(String indexDirectoryPath) throws IOException {
      Directory indexDirectory 
         = FSDirectory.open(new File(indexDirectoryPath));
      indexSearcher = new IndexSearcher(indexDirectory);
      queryParser = new QueryParser(Version.LUCENE_36,
         LuceneConstants.CONTENTS,
         new StandardAnalyzer(Version.LUCENE_36));
   }

   public TopDocs search( String searchQuery) 
      throws IOException, ParseException {
      query = queryParser.parse(searchQuery);
      return indexSearcher.search(query, LuceneConstants.MAX_SEARCH);
   }

   public TopDocs search(Query query) 
      throws IOException, ParseException {
      return indexSearcher.search(query, LuceneConstants.MAX_SEARCH);
   }

   public TopDocs search(Query query,Sort sort) 
      throws IOException, ParseException {
      return indexSearcher.search(query, 
         LuceneConstants.MAX_SEARCH,sort);
   }

   public void setDefaultFieldSortScoring(boolean doTrackScores, 
      boolean doMaxScores) {
      indexSearcher.setDefaultFieldSortScoring(
         doTrackScores,doMaxScores);
   }

   public Document getDocument(ScoreDoc scoreDoc) 
      throws CorruptIndexException, IOException {
      return indexSearcher.doc(scoreDoc.doc);	
   }

   public void close() throws IOException {
      indexSearcher.close();
   }
}

LuceneTester.java

This class is used to test the searching capability of the Lucene library.

package com.tutorialspoint.lucene;

import java.io.IOException;

import org.apache.lucene.document.Document;
import org.apache.lucene.index.Term;
import org.apache.lucene.queryParser.ParseException;
import org.apache.lucene.search.FuzzyQuery;
import org.apache.lucene.search.Query;
import org.apache.lucene.search.ScoreDoc;
import org.apache.lucene.search.Sort;
import org.apache.lucene.search.TopDocs;

public class LuceneTester {
	
   String indexDir = "E:\\Lucene\\Index";
   String dataDir = "E:\\Lucene\\Data";
   Indexer indexer;
   Searcher searcher;

   public static void main(String[] args) {
      LuceneTester tester;
      try {
          tester = new LuceneTester();
          tester.sortUsingRelevance("cord3.txt");
          tester.sortUsingIndex("cord3.txt");
      } catch (IOException e) {
          e.printStackTrace();
      } catch (ParseException e) {
          e.printStackTrace();
      }		
   }

   private void sortUsingRelevance(String searchQuery)
      throws IOException, ParseException {
      searcher = new Searcher(indexDir);
      long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
      
      //create a term to search file name
      Term term = new Term(LuceneConstants.FILE_NAME, searchQuery);
      //create the term query object
      Query query = new FuzzyQuery(term);
      searcher.setDefaultFieldSortScoring(true, false);
      //do the search
      TopDocs hits = searcher.search(query,Sort.RELEVANCE);
      long endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();

      System.out.println(hits.totalHits +
         " documents found. Time :" + (endTime - startTime) + "ms");
      for(ScoreDoc scoreDoc : hits.scoreDocs) {
         Document doc = searcher.getDocument(scoreDoc);
         System.out.print("Score: "+ scoreDoc.score + " ");
         System.out.println("File: "+ doc.get(LuceneConstants.FILE_PATH));
      }
      searcher.close();
   }

   private void sortUsingIndex(String searchQuery)
      throws IOException, ParseException {
      searcher = new Searcher(indexDir);
      long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
      //create a term to search file name
      Term term = new Term(LuceneConstants.FILE_NAME, searchQuery);
      //create the term query object
      Query query = new FuzzyQuery(term);
      searcher.setDefaultFieldSortScoring(true, false);
      //do the search
      TopDocs hits = searcher.search(query,Sort.INDEXORDER);
      long endTime = System.currentTimeMillis();

      System.out.println(hits.totalHits +
      " documents found. Time :" + (endTime - startTime) + "ms");
      for(ScoreDoc scoreDoc : hits.scoreDocs) {
         Document doc = searcher.getDocument(scoreDoc);
         System.out.print("Score: "+ scoreDoc.score + " ");
         System.out.println("File: "+ doc.get(LuceneConstants.FILE_PATH));
      }
      searcher.close();
   }
}

Data & Index Directory Creation

We have used 10 text files from record1.txt to record10.txt containing names and other details of the students and put them in the directory E:\Lucene\Data. Test Data. An index directory path should be created as E:\Lucene\Index. After running the indexing program in the chapter Lucene - Indexing Process, you can see the list of index files created in that folder.

Running the Program

Once you are done with the creation of the source, the raw data, the data directory, the index directory and the indexes, you can compile and run your program. To do this, Keep the LuceneTester.Java file tab active and use either the Run option available in the Eclipse IDE or use Ctrl + F11 to compile and run your LuceneTester application. If your application runs successfully, it will print the following message in Eclipse IDE's console −

10 documents found. Time :31ms
Score: 1.3179655 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record3.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record1.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record2.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record4.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record5.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record6.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record7.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record8.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record9.txt
Score: 0.2635932 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record10.txt
10 documents found. Time :0ms
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record1.txt
Score: 0.2635932 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record10.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record2.txt
Score: 1.3179655 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record3.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record4.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record5.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record6.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record7.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record8.txt
Score: 0.790779 File: E:\Lucene\Data\record9.txt